Chuckman wrote:Midway through the battle, he pops up on Shinji's view-thingy.

"Hello, Shinji. It's like I'm wearing nothing at all."

[wkimg]File:M26 Shinji Manic 1.jpg[/wkimg]FINAL IMPACT HAS BEGUN!!!

More seriously, I still maintain that in FINAL Gendo will inject himself with the the Key (since the 1.0 CRC showed it being a syringe) as a parallel to his grafting ADAM's embryo in his hands in NGE to somehow have direct control over Instrumentality so he could make sure that it goes exactly as he wants, making Rebuild!Gendo a far more dangerous foe than his NGE counterpart, if his actions in Q weren't already proof enough.

Avatar:THE HIGHEST OF ALL HIGHS WE AAAAAAAAAARE!!!Kensuke is a military otaku who, at one point, is shown creepily taking pictures of girls to sell. He would clearly fit right in as an animator at Studio Gainax. -- Compiling_AutumnEoTV is a therapist, EoE is a drill instructor. -- ChuckmanSeriously, that is the most fananked theory I've ever heard, more than Mari being Marty McFly travelling through time to keep her parents (Asushin) together. -- Jäeger

No, I mean he allows himself to be absorbed by the Eva, so that he becomes the Eva. No plugsuit necessary since he IS the Eva. It would be a nice parallel to the story of nebuchanezzar, who himself was turned into a beast by God for his mistreatment of the Israelites. Gendo becoming the beast of the bottomless pit. . . that would be badass.

Gendo in a plugsuit isn't the worst image of Gendo in Final thats come about. There was one where Gendo joined with Lilith and became the Giant Adam/Lilith Hybrid. But in the shape of Gendo, not Rei. Giant, naked, bleach white Gendo. . . try erasing that image from your mind.

I’ll escape now from this world, from the world of Jean Valjean, Jean Valjean is nothing now! Another story must begin!Avatar: "There's a Starman, waiting in the sky. He'd like to come and meet me, but he thinks he'd blow my mind."Phew, I’m not tense anymore… now I’m just miserable.People say "be yourself" but that's bad advice, if we were all to "be ourselves" many of us would stop wearing clothes. -Chuckman

Ray wrote:No, I mean he allows himself to be absorbed by the Eva, so that he becomes the Eva. No plugsuit necessary since he IS the Eva. It would be a nice parallel to the story of nebuchanezzar, who himself was turned into a beast by God for his mistreatment of the Israelites. Gendo becoming the beast of the bottomless pit. . . that would be badass.

While the idea is very cool, I'm not sure how well it fits. If Gendo plans on reuniting with Yui, then the only Eva he would fuse with is Unit-01. Iunno. I'm not sure I see it. Maybe his Eva could fuse with Unit-01 to cause an Impact.

I do think the syringe on the Key indicates it might be absorbed again, a la Adam with Gendo in NGE. Perhaps it'll grant Gendo ATF power like in the manga, but that was sorta silly so maybe not.

Ray wrote:No, I mean he allows himself to be absorbed by the Eva, so that he becomes the Eva. No plugsuit necessary since he IS the Eva. It would be a nice parallel to the story of nebuchanezzar, who himself was turned into a beast by God for his mistreatment of the Israelites. Gendo becoming the beast of the bottomless pit. . . that would be badass.

This is brilliant and if it doesn't come to pass I'm going to be upset.

Gendo being trapped in freakish misery as an Eva launched into space or something while Yui is reunited with Shinji would be a pretty cool ending, but I don't see the latter part happening unless Anno et. al. decide not to be douchealiciously seriousmode about their giant robot movies and their hamfisted "moral".

the prophecy is trueThe wish for respectability, observed spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti, is the greatest deterrent to selfhood and progress.

Chuckman wrote:This is brilliant and if it doesn't come to pass I'm going to be upset.

Gendo being trapped in freakish misery as an Eva launched into space or something while Yui is reunited with Shinji would be a pretty cool ending, but I don't see the latter part happening unless Anno et. al. decide not to be douchealiciously seriousmode about their giant robot movies and their hamfisted "moral".

Ah, I can see it turning out as a punishment for him. Trapped to live forever and alone in a powerless machine. That could be nice.

Fate worse than death FTW! It would serve the Cold hearted bastard right!

Shinji in unit 01 fighting Gendo in unit 13 is what I want to see. The only thing that really bugged me about EOE. Was the lack of a final confrontation between Shinji and Gendo. I really wanted Shinji to get Catharsis of some kind, by calling the old man out. An epic father vs Son Final battle would be a great way to deliver this, and in spades.

I’ll escape now from this world, from the world of Jean Valjean, Jean Valjean is nothing now! Another story must begin!Avatar: "There's a Starman, waiting in the sky. He'd like to come and meet me, but he thinks he'd blow my mind."Phew, I’m not tense anymore… now I’m just miserable.People say "be yourself" but that's bad advice, if we were all to "be ourselves" many of us would stop wearing clothes. -Chuckman

Ray wrote:No, I mean he allows himself to be absorbed by the Eva, so that he becomes the Eva.

Now that is a fascinating idea... Gendo wants to reunite with Yui not by bringing her back to humanity or creating a virtual world where everyone is one, but rather by following her into eva's apotheosis. That's very similar to an idea I had suspected in another thread that his was what the Yui/Gendo/Fuyu conspiracy was trying to accomplish in response to Seele's attempt to keep all the godliness for themselves. Everyone an eva, everyone a god unto themselves.

Rest In Peace ~ 1978 - 2017"I'd consider myself a realist, alright? but in philosophical terms I'm what's called a pessimist. It means I'm bad at parties." - Rust Cohle"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize that half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin"The internet: It's like a training camp for never amounting to anything." - Oglaf"I think internet message boards and the like are dangerous." - Anno

Chuckman wrote:Gendo being trapped in freakish misery as an Eva launched into space or something while Yui is reunited with Shinji would be a pretty cool ending

I would love this for another turned on its head NGE-into-NME-reversal/change. Plus, it'd be nice to see a "happy" ending for Yui. Back when 2.0 hit, I was hoping that Final could have a happy family ending (of sorts) between Rei, Shinji and Gendo, but considering 3.0's direction I doubt this. Maybe a happy family ending between Shinji and either Rei (I'd assume Tentative Rei instead of Rei-2), assuming that's a route they go.

About the Key of Neb, I like the speculation going on in here. It certainly seems plausible, I just hope it'll be used for something instead of a forgotten element!

Sailor Star Dust wrote:About the Key of Neb, I like the speculation going on in here. It certainly seems plausible, I just hope it'll be used for something instead of a forgotten element!

Since half of Gendo's scenes in Q has a close-up shot of the case containing the Key, it's really doubtful that Anno forgot about it.It's like in NGE : ADAM's embryo appeared in episode 8-9 and was seemingly forgotten until suddenly reappearing in Gendo's hand in episode 24.

Avatar:THE HIGHEST OF ALL HIGHS WE AAAAAAAAAARE!!!Kensuke is a military otaku who, at one point, is shown creepily taking pictures of girls to sell. He would clearly fit right in as an animator at Studio Gainax. -- Compiling_AutumnEoTV is a therapist, EoE is a drill instructor. -- ChuckmanSeriously, that is the most fananked theory I've ever heard, more than Mari being Marty McFly travelling through time to keep her parents (Asushin) together. -- Jäeger

Before reading this topic, somehow it had not even occurred to me that Gendo might inject the Key of Neb in Final, even though I already knew about the syringe. Now I'm convinced that's exactly what's going to happen.

But not just because of this topic.

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but my reaction to Q was far different from that of I think most of the audience in the sense that I didn't interpret it as going in a wildly different direction at all, in fact I was more than a little disappointed that it was essentially just a repeat of the heart of episode 24. The major beats are all there: Shinji has become alienated from Asuka, Rei, and Misato, then finds Kaworu only to lose him and wind up even worse off. The only thing Q really changed was to crank the contrast on those basics up hard enough to finally make them stand out, so hard Shinji's feelings seep through the screen and into the audience ourselves. The world becoming ruined, Misato et al's changes... It's all really designed to put us in Shinji's shoes, getting us to empathize with where Shinji was by this point in NGE better than NGE could (at the cost, in my opinion, of a lot of what kept my emotional interest in NGE, but who knows yet if the payoff will be worth it?).

So the reason I would expect Gendo to inject the Key of Neb is not just because the Key of Neb happens to be a syringe, but also because it is Rebuild's obvious parallel to the Adam embryo, simplified to the essence of its role, and after Q proved to me that we should still expect to see a lot of things that remind us of what we've seen before, that leaves me expecting at least a little of the same in Final.

That said, I don't expect Final to be as much of a retread of EoE as Q was of ep 24. Q winding up being such a retread reminds me of something Anno (I think) said at the beginning of the project: that it would be essentially a retelling of NGE but ending with a brand new conclusion. With Ha we all assumed this original plan had been discarded, but in the new perception I have that was given to me by Q, we have (to me) still been watching little more than a retelling of the same basic story as NGE, hitting the same beats. So if that's the case, Final will be where it diverges "for real".

System Administrator"NGE is like a perfectly improvised jazz piece. It builds on a standard and then plays off it from there, and its developments may occasionally recall what it's done before as a way of keeping the whole concatenated." -- Eva Yojimbo"To me watching anime is not just for killing time or entertainment, it is a life style, and a healthy one too." -- symbv"That sounds like the kind of science that makes absolutely 0 sense when you stop and think about it... I LOVE IT." -- Rosenakahara

Sachi wrote:While the idea is very cool, I'm not sure how well it fits. If Gendo plans on reuniting with Yui, then the only Eva he would fuse with is Unit-01. Iunno. I'm not sure I see it. Maybe his Eva could fuse with Unit-01 to cause an Impact.

Ooh, ooh, I know. What has fused with Eva to cause impacts in the past?

If Gendo sticks himself with the key and pulls the trigger, what if it makes him into an Angel ... haha no way, could this result in a GNG (giant naked Gendo)? With his plan being to find Wunder, rip it's belly open, and fuse with Eva-01. It would be even funnier (creepier?) if he incorporates/merges into Eva-13 (which has "ascended" already thanks to 3.33) because of the striking visual similarities between Eva-13 and Eva-01. Adam and Eva.

Eva-01 I imagine would have a different preference. She did bite his head off in EoE...

Gendo being trapped in freakish misery as an Eva launched into space or something while Yui is reunited with Shinji would be a pretty cool ending, but I don't see the latter part happening unless Anno et. al. decide not to be douchealiciously seriousmode about their giant robot movies and their hamfisted "moral".

Wow. This. Imagine if Eva-13 ends up floating through space (in parallel to EoE) while Eva-01 remains on Earth.

I'm actually kind of liking this. It also manages to explain what Gendo is actually doing in 3.33. He's laying the groundwork with Shinji and Eva-13, but once the prep work is done he casts him aside. Then he can use the key to merge with Eva13, go find Yui (which WILLE also helpfully retrieved) and live forever. Or so he thinks. And he's got an army of MP Evas to help him make it happen.

Here is how I imagine the Final battle going between Shinji and Gendo each in their Evas.

SPOILER: Show

Shinji:

"Shut up! I've suffered more than anyone! Yet you get everything you've ever wanted? Where's the justice in that?"

"I! HATE! YOU! Everytime we've met I've held back because you were my father, because I didn't want to become a monster just like you! Well guess what father? I am a monster like you now! So get ready to feel every ounce of my pain!"(Epic primal scream before literal world shattering beatdown)(punch)Rei is dead!(SLAM)Kaworu's dead!(Eva Bites Gendos Eva)Touji is dead!(Tears off flesh)Asuka hates me!(goes for Eva's eye)Misato hates me!(Rips gendos Eva's eye out)I never should have been born!(SLAM)I should have died! (SLAM)Do me a favor father!JUST!(SLAM) LET!(SLAM) ME! (SLAM) DIE! (Unit 01 Goes Beserk)

Gendo's Eva should match his color scheme, so i'm thinking black with Red accents. Who here wants to hear Gendo scream for mercy when Shinji rips his core out and feeds it to him?

I’ll escape now from this world, from the world of Jean Valjean, Jean Valjean is nothing now! Another story must begin!Avatar: "There's a Starman, waiting in the sky. He'd like to come and meet me, but he thinks he'd blow my mind."Phew, I’m not tense anymore… now I’m just miserable.People say "be yourself" but that's bad advice, if we were all to "be ourselves" many of us would stop wearing clothes. -Chuckman

Gendo wins, but the experience of viewing the universe in five dimensions is so shattering that he willingly surrenders his power and fixes the world. Shinji almost screws it up in an attempt to resurrect Rei, but Gendo convinces him to let her go.

Shinji wakes up beside Asuka on a beach as sparkling blue waters lap at the sand. Asuka straddles him and begins choking him, but he caresses her cheek and she stops.

I'll be dissapointed if Final isn't at least on some level centered on the reckoning between Gendo and Shinji. Their relationship was a bigger focus or rather, a more direct focus; Shinji's relationship with him in the series is still vital, but there's only a few points of cofrontation and it fades into the background towards the end, and is never really resolved.

the prophecy is trueThe wish for respectability, observed spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti, is the greatest deterrent to selfhood and progress.

So Gendo got everything he wanted, and once he reaches that point he realize it's not what he wanted and reset the whole thing, meaning that everyone's struggles to try to stop him and save the world the past 14 years was for naught.And on top of that, he gets to teach a lesson to Shinji about letting people we lost go!? That would be the joke of the decade!And that's without taking into account that Shinji would be close to screw-up the whole planet, again!

I agree that the relationship between Shinji and Gendo plays a much bigger role in Rebuild, if only because this time around Shinji was a vital piece of Gendo's plan, but your scenario would turn him into a Villain Sue, and after everything he has done, he's way past the point of deserving such a fate.

Avatar:THE HIGHEST OF ALL HIGHS WE AAAAAAAAAARE!!!Kensuke is a military otaku who, at one point, is shown creepily taking pictures of girls to sell. He would clearly fit right in as an animator at Studio Gainax. -- Compiling_AutumnEoTV is a therapist, EoE is a drill instructor. -- ChuckmanSeriously, that is the most fananked theory I've ever heard, more than Mari being Marty McFly travelling through time to keep her parents (Asushin) together. -- Jäeger

(GENDO's Eva roars like a beast, and grabs Shinji's punch before it can land)

Father? Oh no. . .

(Is Swallowed Whole by Gendo's Eva as it begins taking on traits of Unit 01.)

I’ll escape now from this world, from the world of Jean Valjean, Jean Valjean is nothing now! Another story must begin!Avatar: "There's a Starman, waiting in the sky. He'd like to come and meet me, but he thinks he'd blow my mind."Phew, I’m not tense anymore… now I’m just miserable.People say "be yourself" but that's bad advice, if we were all to "be ourselves" many of us would stop wearing clothes. -Chuckman

Made the plugsuit black and red, add the cyborg glasses, age up Fuyu and Gendo, and voila! we have a Final spoiler.

I’ll escape now from this world, from the world of Jean Valjean, Jean Valjean is nothing now! Another story must begin!Avatar: "There's a Starman, waiting in the sky. He'd like to come and meet me, but he thinks he'd blow my mind."Phew, I’m not tense anymore… now I’m just miserable.People say "be yourself" but that's bad advice, if we were all to "be ourselves" many of us would stop wearing clothes. -Chuckman

Bah, clearly Gendo and Fuyu will have to tandem pilot 13. just as Asuka and Mari will team up in that frankeneva while Shinji and ReiQ will almost certainly both end up in 01 again.

Rest In Peace ~ 1978 - 2017"I'd consider myself a realist, alright? but in philosophical terms I'm what's called a pessimist. It means I'm bad at parties." - Rust Cohle"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize that half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin"The internet: It's like a training camp for never amounting to anything." - Oglaf"I think internet message boards and the like are dangerous." - Anno